Specialized large poultry processing plants are found today all over the world. Most plants (chicken, turkey, and duck) are divided into two sections. The first is for primary processing and includes the following activities: slaughtering, defeathering, evisceration, chilling, and packaging. The second is further processing and value addition which primarily includes the preparation of cooked products. These operations can be automated to varying degrees, depending on factors, such as labor cost, required output, and capital investment. In this article, the different steps involved in primary processing will be discussed with an emphasis on advances in mechanization and automation. Most large-scale plants include automated evisceration and cut-up lines that are designed to handle 8000–14 000 birds per hour on a single line. Equipment such as computerized image analysis is also finding its way to processing plants and is being used for automated high-speed grading, guiding cutting equipment, and potentially inspection purposes.